


Miss Right Now

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [47]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:59:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Lester is maybe slightly over-invested in his daughter's love-life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miss Right Now

            “You just miss Juliet,” Lyle said accurately, leaning against the kitchen table next to Lester’s seat.

 

            Lester crushed the sigh he was about to heave and stared out of the back door at his daughter and her new girlfriend, who were playing with fire. Astrid said something to Liz, and Liz laughed, abandoning the barbecue tongs and slinging a casual arm around Astrid’s waist before kissing her. “Keep your voice down.”

 

            “Not even Liz can hear through glass at normal volume, not when she’s preoccupied.” Lyle treated Astrid to a critical once-over. “And she bloody well ought to be preoccupied. Your daughter has good taste in women.”

 

            Lester’s mouth twisted before he could stop it and he folded his arms. “Does she?”

 

            “Yes,” Kathy said, sweeping in and depositing a glass of wine in Lester’s hand. “Come on, James, lighten up. Have the girls finished with the barbecue?”

 

            “Any time you can persuade them to stop kissing instead of cooking,” Lyle said, smiling at Kathy with easy false charm.

 

            Kathy actually grinned. Lester bit back resentment that she’d called Liz and Astrid, a girl she, Lester and Lyle had known of for approximately two days before Liz had brought her down from university to meet them, ‘the girls’. Juliet had been with Liz more than two years and had never merited more than a frosty ‘Juliet’, not even in those few golden days after Liz came home from the anomalies, thin and weary and lighting up in Juliet’s presence, and Kathy, Emily, Lyle and Lester had all been able to hold a civil conversation. Needless to say, it had taken less than six weeks for Kathy and Liz to stop being on speaking terms, which meant that Lyle and Kathy were no longer on speaking terms, Emily and Kathy couldn’t be got into the same building without an explosion, and Lester was pouring a fortifying glass of brandy before every phone conversation with his ex-wife. And it couldn’t be forgotten that Liz and Juliet had broken up the following autumn, with the result that Liz would not look Emily in the eye, and Juliet couldn’t be in the same room with any of them without transforming her sweet face into the porcelain mask she wore on stage, every expression calculated meticulously in advance.  But the fact remained that even at the best of times, Kathy had never been able to accept Juliet.

 

            She _adored_ Astrid, though.

 

            Lester came back to himself to realise Kathy was raising one implacable eyebrow at him.

 

            Lester produced a pale imitation of a smile. “But not right for Liz.”  


            Kathy snorted, and Lyle chuckled. “Liz isn’t looking for Miss Right. She broke up with Miss Right before she left school. What we have here is Miss Right Now.”

 

            Kathy pointed an accusatory finger at him and sipped at her own wine with her free hand. “I will live to see you wrong, Jonathan Lyle.”

 

            Lester trod on Lyle’s foot. Lyle smiled angelically and knocked his beer back.

 

            Outside, a blast of wind plucked at Liz’s hoodie and tossed Astrid’s ironed-straight hair in the breeze. Astrid took a clip from where it was attached to her belt and twisted her hair back, auburn strands flying about her face. She glanced back through the French doors into the kitchen as she did so, bright blue eyes lined by sooty lashes and eyeliner, and realised that they were all watching her; she smiled and waved.

 

            Lester smiled back at her. She was a nice girl, never showed it if Liz disconcerted her, teased and challenged her, but Lester had a hideous suspicion that she would only drag Liz further into trouble than Liz was already inclined to go. Juliet had balanced Liz out, as had Simon: but Simon had gone to university in Birmingham, too far away to do more than try to talk Liz out of things over the phone, and Juliet and Liz never spoke any more.

 

            Lester _worried_ , all right.  He didn’t even think Liz was in love with Astrid. He watched how they moved around each other: Liz’s eyes were never drawn to Astrid the way they always had been to Juliet, and Astrid kept disengaging from Liz when Liz put an arm around her. Worse, Liz never seemed to care. She barely noticed.

 

            Kathy caught his eye and smiled.

 

            Lester’s answering smile was polished and practised, but not genuine. Lyle put a hand over his where it rested on the kitchen table and pressed gently.

 

            “Burgers,” Astrid announced, elbowing open the door to the garden, hands fully occupied with a plate of charred meat.

 

            “Lovely, dear,” Kathy said, taking the plate from her. “Do get yourself something to eat, won’t you?”

 

            _Dear_? Lester wondered if Kathy had had a personality transplant, or if she’d just been waiting for either Nicky or Liz to have a girlfriend she approved of to whip out the Miss Marple persona, and braced himself.

 

***

 

            Lyle checked the front door, flicked off the lights in the main room, and poured himself and Lester glasses of water, before padding silently back through the darkened flat, dodging coffee tables and dropped shoes with unerring skill. He passed Liz’s door, which was slightly ajar; golden light spilled out into the corridor, and he could hear Astrid laughing, higher and brighter than Juliet’s voice had been. He saw a flash of Liz’s dark hair and the green t-shirt she’d been wearing and heard someone tackle somebody else onto the bed, springs creaking on impact, and moved swiftly on. The wonky wooden letters that still spelled out _Liz_ , seven years after she and Lester had moved into the flat, glinted as he passed, and Lyle felt an unaccustomed burst of nostalgia. He remembered when Liz was too small to look him in the eye without craning her neck, too young to leave home, too wary to pick up flippant, impermanent red-heads and bring them home to meet her parents.  

 

            “That was Jon,” he heard Liz say as he reached the end of the corridor, and Astrid’s  disbelieving answer – and then Liz again, confident, amused, “yeah, he’s a bit ninja, Jon is.”

 

            Lyle contained a grin and slipped into his own bedroom. It was darker in here, with only one lamp still on. The pool of light it cast shone softly over the cotton sheets, gleamed on his partner’s greying hair and the book he was reading from.

 

            “Evening, gorgeous,” Lyle said, and handed Lester his glass of water. “Come here often?”

 

            “You’re hilarious, Jon,” Lester said, giving Lyle a severe look over the tops of his reading glasses, and Lyle noticed a small, defined furrow that had developed between Lester’s eyebrows. He only wore that particular expression when one of his living children was giving him cause for concern, or when he visited Jamie’s grave.

 

            Lyle felt the side of his mouth twitch up, and he set his own glass down before stripping off his clothes. “Don’t you know it, cherub. Do you really dislike Astrid that much?”

 

            “I don’t dislike her,” Lester said rather feebly, putting his book aside, bookmark firmly in place. “I just don’t… I don’t think she is, in any way, a replacement for Juliet.”

 

            Lyle rolled his eyes at Lester and ducked under the covers.  “Nobody could replace Juliet. Heard from her lately?”

 

            “Emily says she’s dancing in the corps de ballet for the English National Ballet these days. A Wili in Giselle.”

 

            “I can’t see Juliet doing a penis impression.”

 

            “ _No_ , Jon, but I’m sure she makes a wonderful vengeful spirit of a wronged woman,” Lester snapped, then sighed. “Sorry. Sorry. I just – I don’t think Astrid is right for Liz. I thought Liz and Juliet had something… really remarkable, and to go from that to _Astrid_ …”

 

            Anyone would think Astrid was a petty criminal, Lyle thought affectionately. He knew what Lester meant: seeing Liz go from delicate, sophisticated Juliet, a china doll with a steel core, to careless, provocative Astrid, smart as a whip and thoughtless with it, would give anyone whiplash. But it had been two whole years since Liz and Juliet had broken up. And Lyle didn’t believe for a moment that there hadn’t been other girls they weren’t aware of, that the disastrous episode with Madison Oppenheimer and abortive fling with a girl in Fresher’s Week was the sum total of Liz’s romantic adventures. He suspected that if they knew more about Liz’s love life, they’d have a proper little dossier to keep them busy – a little collection of shrewd, courageous young women, not a single one of them blonde or a dancer, and all of them a bit like Juliet and a bit like Astrid. He reminded himself to compare notes with Simon, who almost certainly knew all the names and circumstances involved and was probably friends with them on Facebook.

 

            Lyle drew Lester into his arms and kissed his temple, soothing him. Lester was genuinely uncomfortable, and Lyle thought he knew why. Lester had thought that Liz was steady and sure, that she had herself under control and would never let loose, and since Liz had come back from her unscheduled jaunt through the anomalies he’d had to face the fact that Liz now had an iron grip on her temper but was far more casual about drinking, sex and risk-taking than Lyle believed Lester ever had been. Astrid was just another less than perfect life choice, fun right now, not permanent.

 

            It alarmed Lyle sometimes, the way Liz took after him.

 

            “Liz just wants a bit of fun,” Lyle said calmly. “Astrid’s fun. God, James, have you seen her?”

 

            “Yes,” Lester said grumpily, and curled into Lyle’s arms like a very cross and demanding cat.

 

            “She’s just having fun,” Lyle repeated. “Astrid’s messing Liz around, and Liz is messing Astrid around. That’s what bothers you.”

 

            “That and the way Kathy treats her,” Lester admitted. There was real resentment in his voice, and Lyle wondered if he’d miscalculated.

 

            “What?”

 

            “She behaves like Astrid’s been around for forever, and yet she always put Juliet on the outside.”

 

            “Right.” Lyle thought about this for a moment. “… _Right_.”

 

            “Yes,” Lester said.

 

            “You’re going to make me annoyed on Juliet’s behalf.”

 

            “Well, that’ll be two of us.” Lester turned onto his side and switched out the light.

 

            Lyle sighed and punched at his pillow to knock it into a more comfortable shape. “Did you never date someone solely because the sex was great?”

 

            “No, not really.” Lester sighed. “I met Kathy when we were at university, you know. I didn’t spend a lot of time… sleeping around.”

 

            “If this is supposed to be some kind of cautionary tale…”   Lyle got a faceful of pillow and laughed through it. He grabbed Lester and dragged him close, pressing a breathless kiss to his lips, still half-laughing at both Lester’s grumpiness and his own innate sense of mischief. “Stop worrying. Your daughter is sleeping with her girlfriend next door and neither of them cares about whether it lasts beyond Christmas.”

 

            “Thank you, Jon. The moment is now officially dead.”

 

            “Aww…”

 

            “No, Jon. Dead. Extinct. It has joined the choir eternal.”

 

            “I don’t need nails to keep me standing upright, though.”

 

            “That is a revolting mental image. If you could kill the moment _twice_ –“

 

            “I’ve always been an over-achiever.”

 

            “The moment is a _zombie_ ,” Lester said darkly, and then paused and choked as he realised what he’d said, and then they were both laughing helplessly, and Lyle thought _yeah, we’ll be just fine_.

 

            If he could hear anything from down the corridor, he kept it to himself.

 

***

                       

            Liz clattered indoors, soaking wet from her run, and tracked mud neatly onto the newspaper Lyle had left out after his own experiments in dirty footprints had earned him a severe talking-to from Lester’s cleaning lady.

 

            “How is it out there?” Lyle asked, muting the BBC News and twisting to look over the back of the sofa at Liz.

 

            “Not as cold as uni,” Liz said, and toed off her shoes, going over to the kitchen counter where she had left her phone and picking up her messages. “Oh – _God_.”

 

            “What?”

 

            “Mum wants to know when I’m bringing Astrid over for Christmas,” Liz said, sounding vaguely horrified.

 

            “Why?”

 

            “Mum really liked her.” Liz shrugged, apparently puzzled. “Dunno why. I was expecting fireworks when she came round over the summer, I mean, Mum hated - my other girlfriends, so…”

 

            “What are you going to say?” Lyle knew she’d broken up with Astrid – it had been casually mentioned in a phone call home, and she hadn’t sounded distressed so neither he nor Lester had pushed it – but nothing more than that.

 

            “Not a bloody clue.” Liz put the phone down and wandered over to the kettle. “Coffee?”

 

            “No thanks, I’ve got some. You’re going to need to tell Kathy something or she’ll never leave you alone.”

 

            “Yeah, but what?” Liz filled the kettle and switched it on. “I mean, is this the right moment to tell Mum that Astrid dumped me for the guy she wanted a threesome with when I said no? It’s not like we’re not still good friends, Astrid just needed some dick in her life, and that’s not my thing.”

 

            Lyle took a moment to absorb this. “You _could_ tell your mum that. I’d pay good money to see her face if you did.”

 

            Liz gave him a dubious look. “I think I’ll say we decided we were better off as friends.”    

 

            “That’s more like it,” Lyle said, and drained his coffee. “By the way, does your dad know about you and Astrid?”

 

            Liz paused and thought for a minute. “I don’t think so.”

 

            “Please tell him,” Lyle said. “And please make sure I’m there when you do.”

 


End file.
